Election consolidates power of El Salvador’s authoritarian president

El Salvador’s populist president Nayib Bukele will become the country’s most powerful leader in decades after his allies won control of parliament in legislative elections, removing the main check on his authoritarian government.

The result of Sunday’s poll will cause alarm in Washington, where Joe Biden’s administration has already voiced “worries” over Bukele’s tactics. These have included disobeying supreme court rulings and sending troops into the national assembly to coerce legislators into approving his spending plans.

Bukele’s New Ideas party and its allies have won well over half the seats in the new parliament, according to partial results from the electoral authority with 75 per cent of votes counted, and looked to be close to a two-thirds majority which would allow him to nominate supreme court justices. The pie chart showing the results omitted the percentages won by each party.

Even before official results were in, the 39-year-old president, an ally of former US president Donald Trump, tweeted “VICTORY” over images of fireworks. He later claimed that his allies would win 60 of the 84 seats in parliament, adding: “Thanks to the Salvadoran people. Thanks to God.”

Bukele’s harsh crackdown on gang violence and his adept social media campaigns against corruption and traditional politics have made him popular with Salvadorans who are tired of endemic violence in one of the world’s most crime-ridden countries.

Voters in Sunday’s election turned their back decisively on the two parties that have dominated government in El Salvador since the end of the civil war in 1992, the leftist FMLN and the rightwing ARENA grouping. Between them, they won less than a quarter of the votes, according to partial results.

Giancarlo Morelli, Latin American and Caribbean analyst at the Economist Intelligence Unit, said “such an extreme concentration of power could also be detrimental to El Salvador’s young democracy”.

“The electorate is set to grant Bukele an unparalleled opportunity to approve necessary, urgent structural socio-economic reforms,” he said. “Nevertheless, concentration of such political power in one individual carries substantial risks to El Salvador’s institutions.”

Before casting his ballot, wearing a mask and trademark backwards-facing baseball cap, Bukele used a televised news conference to urge supporters to turn out the vote “to kiss this thing off and get the triumph the country needs”.

His public remarks on polling day violated electoral rules and the electoral tribunal began an investigation. Bukele last year repeatedly disobeyed the Supreme Court over Covid-19 quarantine regulations and sent troops on to the streets to enforce a strict lockdown, earning a reproach from UN human rights commissioner Michelle Bachelet.

“If you voted on February 3 2019 [presidential elections] let’s finish celebrating what we began that day. Let’s have a legislature that works hand-in-hand with the president,” Bukele said.

He also criticised alleged irregularities at polling stations and promoted a hashtag #MassiveVoteKillsFraud, apparently designed to scare Salvadorans into turning out in bigger numbers.

“Sound familiar?” tweeted Orlando Pérez, dean of the School of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of North Texas at Dallas. “There’s no evidence the election tribunal or anyone else is planning to steal the elections.”

After trampling political opposition at home, Bukele faces a difficult task engaging with Biden’s administration, which has emphasised the importance of human rights. US officials refused to meet Bukele when he turned up in Washington unannounced last month, according to AP.

Bukele is likely to use his new parliamentary majority to push ahead with borrowing plans, including a request for an IMF programme to underpin El Salvador’s shaky finances. The fiscal deficit hit 9.6 per cent last year and debt is ballooning.

Moody’s Investors Service believes borrowing will surpass 90 per cent of gross domestic product next year and concerns over the sustainability of its debt have sparked a sharp deterioration in market sentiment towards El Salvador, which needs to maintain market access as it has to repay $800m in loans in January 2023, the rating agency said.